Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/728

 714 V. BENCH AND BAR decisions upon the new business of banking. During the Middle Ages and up to the Restoration, the strong boxes of the merchants and landowners and their bailiffs provided the only banking facilities ; but the practice adopted by goldsmiths of keeping the money of depositors, and the use of orders upon goldsmiths, which are our modern bank checks, came into vogue. The notes of goldsmiths began circulating as money, while the Bank of England, which was founded soon after the Revolution, began to issue its notes. The Childs' banking house, originally a goldsmith's shop, still remains as the oldest banking business in Eng- land. The earlier cases ^ treat all questions of agency in the terms of the law of master and servant. Historically, of course, it is impossible to separate the law of servants from that of agents ; yet we now recognize the plain distinction in legal usage that the word " servant " is used only in re- gard to a hability in tort, while the word " agent " is used as to a liability arising out of a contract or its correlative, deceit. The word " agent," borrowed from the continental jurisprudence, gradually came into common use, but the manner of the development of the law of agency has much to do with the confusion which arises even to-day from the failure to discriminate between an agent and a servant, in the above sense. In 1733, during the chancellorship of Lord King, the law- yers were finally compelled to use their mother tongue. The record now spoke in English instead of in Latin, and the declaration and subsequent pleadings entered upon the roll now became literal translations of the old Latin forms. The advocates of the bill were forced to overcome a strong oppo- sition from the judges. Lord Chief Justice Raymond on behalf of all the judges opposed the change. In later times ( both Blackstone and Ellenborough regretted the Act. El- lenborough asserted that it had a tendency to make attorneys illiterate ; but surely a man must be misguided, indeed, who considers " law Latin " a literary language. 'Ward vs. Evans, 2 Salk. 442; Thorald vs. Smith, 11 Mod. 71, 87; Nickson vs. Brohan, 10 Mod. 109.